A prober is known as a substrate inspection apparatus that inspects electrical characteristics of semiconductor devices such as a power device or a memory formed on a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter, simply referred to as “wafer”) as a substrate.
The prober includes a circular plate-shaped probe card 121 (see FIG. 12) having a multiple number of probe needles 120; and a stage which is moved in a vertical direction and a horizontal direction while mounting the wafer thereon. As the stage mounting the wafer thereon is moved toward the probe card 121, the probe needles 120 are allowed to come into contact with electrode pads or solder bumps of the semiconductor devices. In this state, by allowing an electric current for inspection to be flown to the electrode pads or the solder bumps through the probe needles 120, the electrical characteristics of the semiconductor devices are inspected (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
When inspecting the electrical characteristics of the semiconductor devices, multiple kinds of inspections may be performed on the semiconductor devices by using the same probe card 121. In such a case, electrodes pads 130 to be brought into contact with the probe needles 120 are changed by rotating a wafer W by, e.g., 180° on a horizontal plane (hereinafter, this rotation is will be referred to as “horizontal rotation”), as shown in FIG. 13A and FIG. 13B.
Conventionally, the stage is structured to be rotatable horizontally. A rotating device of the stage is implemented by a sliding device using a ball screw. Since the stage is rotated by the movement of a nut as a slider screw-coupled to the ball screw, a horizontal rotation amount of the stage is limited to a movement amount of the nut, only ±7° to ±8° (see, for example, Patent Document 2). Thus, the wafer W cannot be rotated horizontally by 180°.
For the reason, to rotate the wafer W horizontally by 180°, the wafer W is separated from the stage and is horizontally rotated by a rotating table provided in a loader of the prober. Then, the rotated wafer W is mounted on the stage again.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. H07-297242
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Publication No. 4971416
However, when rotating the wafer W horizontally by the rotating table within the loader, the wafer W need not moved between the stage and the rotating table, so that the throughput in the inspection of the semiconductor devices are decreased.